SOEP-Suche

The Distributional Impact of Subsidies to Higher Education - Empirical Evidence from Germany

Social Comparisons on Subjective Well-Being: The Role of Social and Cultural Capital

Using the German Socio-Economic Panel, we analyze the relevance of modeling social comparisons to determine their effect on subjective well-being. We find that it is important to model social comparisons in such a way that captures the sensitivity of individuals to proximity. The impact on subjective well-being differs depending on the manner in which proximity is modeled, revealing that the underlying ...

Women's Part-Time Wage Penalties Across Countries

Disability, Work and Income: a British perspective

The Male Marital Wage Premium in Germany: Selection versus Specialization

Does marriage pay more than cohabitation?

Purpose– Empirical research has unambiguously shown that married men receive higher wages than unmarried, whereas a wage premium for cohabiters is not as evident yet. This paper aims to exploit the observed difference between the marital and the cohabiting wage premium in Germany to draw conclusions about the sources, typically explained by specialisation (e.g. husbands being more productive because ...

Making Work Pay" in a Rationed Labour Market

This paper empirically analyzes the labor supply effects of two “making work pay” reforms in Germany. We provide evidence in favor of policies that distinguish between low effort and low productivity by targeting individuals with low wages rather than those with low earnings. We discuss our results more generally and with comparisons to the family-based tax credits in force in the US and the UK. For ...

Analysing the Effects of Tax-Benefit Reforms on Income Distribution: A Decomposition Approach

Fiscal union in Europe? Redistributive and stabilizing effects of a European tax-benefit system and fiscal equalization mechanism

The current debt crisis has given rise to a debate concerning deeper fiscal integration in Europe. The view is widespread that moving towards a ‘fiscal union’ would have stabilizing effects in case of macroeconomic shocks. We study the economic effects of introducing two elements of a fiscal union: an EU-wide tax and transfer system and a fiscal equalization mechanism. Using the European tax-benefit ...

Tax-Benefit Systems in Europe and the US: Between Equity and Efficiency

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor supply elasticities on microdata and adopt an inverted optimal tax approach to characterize the redistributive ...